The Partnership on AI adds Intel, Salesforce and others as it formalizes Grand Challenges and work groups

Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony, SAP, McKinsey & Company, Zalando and Cogitai are joining the Partnership on AI, a collection of companies and non-profits that have committed to sharing best practices and communicating openly about the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence research. The new members will be working alongside existing partners that include Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple.

Collectively, the partners will be hosting a series of AI Grand Challenges to incentivize researchers to contribute to key roadblocks in the field and to address some of the social and societal ramifications of artificial intelligence research. The group is also announcing a best paper award for the greatest contribution to “AI, People, and Society,” to aid in addressing a similar goal.

In addition to the paper awards and challenges, the Partnership on AI will also be establishing topic and sector-specific work groups to make good on the group’s promise to generate a list of best practices for researchers.

The success of these projects depends on being able to build a community around the partnership, independent from larger partners. A new Civil Society Fellowship program will provide resources to anyone who feels they can help improve the impact that AI research has on the world, helping to kickstart outside involvement.

In addition to the new corporate partners, the group also announced that fourteen non-profits would be contributing to the organization. This group includes non-profits with an interest in promoting continued research in AI and ensuring equality of access to its benefits.

The full list of new non-profit partners includes the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the AI Forum of New Zealand, the Centre for Democracy & Technology, the Centre for Internet and Society – India, Data & Society Research Institute, the Digital Asia Hub, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Future of Privacy Forum, the Human Rights Watch, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UNICEF, Upturn, and the XPRIZE Foundation.

The Partnership on AI is currently hunting for an Executive Director who will help to manage the organization’s operations. The team says it is still open to new partners so it would be reasonable to expect the list to continue to grow in the coming months.